Uneven horror movies no more rebounding while streaming
It might sound strange to criticize a horror movie for providing nothing else except a succession of terrifying jump scares, but that’s the position writer/director Jacob Chase’s Come Play found itself in.
Come Play is a 2020 American horror thriller film written and directed by Jacob Chase. The film stars Gillian Jacobs, John Gallagher Jr., Azhy Robertson, and Winslow Fegley.
Come Play was released in the United States on October 30, 2020, by Focus Features. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $13 million against a budget of $9 million.
Plot - Oliver is a young non-verbal autistic boy who uses a smartphone to communicate with people. He attends school and is mostly taken care of by his mother, Sarah; his father Marty spends most of his time at work trying to make ends meet. Sarah and Marty's marriage has become difficult to the extent that Marty moves out. One night Oliver sees an app on his smartphone, "Misunderstood Monsters", narrating the story of a monster named Larry who "just wants a friend". After he reads the story, lights go out by themselves. He plays with an app on his tablet that identifies faces, and it identifies a face in the empty space next to him. At school, Oliver is bullied by his classmates due to his condition. They lure him into a field and take his phone, throwing it out into the field.
One night, Sarah organizes a sleepover so Oliver can become more social. The three boys who bullied him come over. Oliver hides the tablet as he is terrified of it. One of the boys retrieves the tablet and reads the story. The lights go out and Larry appears, but he can only be seen through the tablet's camera. Larry attacks Byron, one of the boys, and the terrified boys all blame Oliver for the incident. In the following days, Sarah begins to see the same strange things Oliver did. Through Oliver's tablet, Larry says he wants to take Oliver back to his home world.
That night, Marty takes Oliver to his night-shift parking lot attendant job. Larry, revealing as a skeletal creature similar to a ghoul, begins to stalk them. When Marty witnesses Larry picking Oliver off from the ground, he finally believes Sarah and Oliver. They break the tablet and assume everything is over. Byron is traumatized from the incident at Oliver's house but comes clean on what really happened, absolving Oliver of blame. It is revealed that Byron and Oliver were once good friends but their friendship ended badly because Oliver accidentally hurt Byron which also caused their moms to break up their friendship. They both reconcile.
One night at work, Marty is attacked by Larry, who can travel through electricity and usually communicates with people through screens. Marty is hurt but alive. Larry proceeds to attack Oliver at his house, intending to take the boy. Sarah trashes all electrical devices in the house, but the TV finishes playing Larry's story before she can shut it off. Larry takes physical form, being able to move in real life without the use of a screen, and begins to stalk them throughout the house. Oliver takes Sarah to the field where there is no electricity for Larry to follow them with, but Larry uses Oliver's phone that the boys threw earlier to trap them there.
Oliver must take Larry's hand to enter Larry's world, but at the last second, Sarah takes Larry's hand instead, offering to go with him and become his friend instead of Oliver. In their final moments, Oliver looks Sarah in the eye for the first time, something Sarah has struggled with ever since Oliver was diagnosed. Larry takes Sarah and they both vanish, leaving Oliver alone. In the aftermath, Oliver lives with Marty, and they intend to deal with their loss. Marty gets more involved with Oliver's therapy.
One night, the lights go out again and strange noises are heard downstairs. Marty grabs his phone and sees Oliver and Sarah, who has been taken by Larry, playing happily. Sarah tells her son "I'll protect you", as Marty smiles. Larry's fate is left unknown.
An feature-length adaptation of his own short film Larry, Chase certainly knows how to strike terror into the hearts of viewers by orchestrating and delivering a string of intense moments throughout the running time, which makes it even more of a crying shame that Come Play as a whole turned out to be a touch on the underwhelming side.
A lonely kid spends the majority of his time buried in a tablet or smartphone screen, with his parents hoping that he’ll eventually make friends. That does happen, but not in the way anybody was expecting or hoping for, after a monster uses the child’s technology as a means to enter our world and cause havoc.
More Articles:
https://public.flourish.studio/story/1142961/
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/8751044/
https://www.mychemicalromance.com/news/adam-sandler-returns-drama-netflix-4101466
https://mugendaily.blogspot.com/2022/02/ive-enjoyed-watching-bdsm-k-dramas-love.html
https://writeonwall.com/adam-sandler-gets-his-hustle-on-netflix-sports-drama/
Despite some solid production design, strong performances, and a lurching feeling of dread, Come Play has a sense of unevenness that it can never really shake, which holds it back from achieving true horror greatness. That’s reflected in the middle-of-the-road 57% Rotten Tomatoes score, but HBO subscribers have suddenly been discovering the film in their droves.
As per FlixPatrol, Come Play currently ranks one of the platform’s Top 10 hits in seventeen countries, becoming the latest overlooked horror to find a new audience on the small screen.
Comments
Post a Comment